I remember two years ago, when I first started using Ubuntu, I went to look for help and found the official Wiki. I clicked about three links deep and decided it was too difficult to find what I was looking for. The page layouts were confusing, and I had no idea what the documentation was saying. Then, somehow, I found out about the Ubuntu Guide and fell in love with it. Before that, I had been deathly (and quite irrationally) afraid of the command-line. There was something comforting about seeing all those commands, one after the other, laid out together on one long page. Somehow, to me back then, that didn’t seem as overwhelming as the Wiki.
Then I found out about the Ubuntu Forums and later about The Ubuntu Documentation Storage Facility.
At some point along the way, I decided to create my own Ubuntu tutorials site, which turned into the Psychocats Ubuntu site. Even though many people have been encouraging about my efforts and have told me how useful they’ve found my work to be, I have had a couple of people say something to the effect of Why are you creating another tutorial site? Why not just contribute to the Wiki?
Well, there were a few reasons I didn’t contribute to the Wiki:
- For a beginner like me, the learning curve on using the Wiki was too much to deal with. I was already coming to grips with learning Ubuntu. I didn’t need another thing to try to figure out. Even now, after I have contributed a few pages to the Wiki, I still can’t suss out how to include screenshots on Wiki pages.
- Anyone can go in and fix the content of the Wiki to contain better explanations or more commands, but you can’t just change the presentation, stylesheets, and organization willy-nilly… not unless you want to step on a lot of people’s virtual toes.
- I had different goals from the Wiki, the Ubuntu Guide, and the Documentation Storage Facility. My set of guides was never intended to be a comprehensive library (Wiki, Storage) or a quick reference (Ubuntu Guide). The Psychocats Ubuntu site is all about being digestible and focusing on new users. I also believe in the power of screenshots, even though I sometimes present command-line solutions, too.
- I haven’t found anything inherently bad about fragmentation, especially since I’ve unofficially released Psychocats under an open license and have even migrated some of my tutorials over to the official Wiki. I love some of the other tutorials I’ve spotted, including the How to Install ANYTHING in Ubuntu guide and Herman’s Guide to Dual-booting.
Yes, I realize it’s confusing to new users if “everything” isn’t all in one place, but I was a new user once, and I found “everything” confusing at the Wiki, so that argument doesn’t hold water. It’s 2007, and the internet is a big place, so get used to a little confusion. At least we have search engines to help us out.
Collaboration doesn’t always take traditional forms, and so there’s no need to panic when you encounter documentation fragmentation, folks.
I agree with you. I’ve somehow never felt comfortable about Wikis.
Nothing like having full control over your contribution to the community and if it means posting on your own website, why not?
I agree. The community documentation is poorly organized, repetitive, and assumes too much knowledge of Linux/Ubuntu. Keep up the good work!
Sorry for the late comment, but I only just saw this post. Coincidentally, I posted the contrary point of view a short time after this post:
http://www.mdke.org/?p=87
This page has a more detailed explanation:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DocumentationTeam/IndependentDocEfforts
I understand that people find the community documentation disorganised (although I suspect that it’s come on a long way since you tried it a couple of years ago).
Anyway, I’d like to briefly address some of the arguments you’ve put (hopefully the quoting won’t look too bad):
“the internet is a big place, so get used to a little confusion”
I don’t think that’s a positive attitude: it’s our duty as volunteers working to help users to try to find the way to do so (a) most efficiently, and (b) in the way which is most helpful for them. And that brings me to the next point:
“I had different goals from the Wiki […] The Psychocats Ubuntu site is all about being digestible and focusing on new users”
That’s obviously a perfectly laudable goal, but to be frank it is the goal of all documentation that has proper goals :) The community documentation isn’t *meant* to be confusing; to the extent that it is so, that’s just a result of not having enough people working on it, lack of organisation: in sum, all things which we should work together to solve. Setting up a new resource isn’t the best way to do that.
“you can’t just change the presentation, stylesheets, and organization”
Well, you can: we are obviously keen to improve the look and presentation of the community documentation. We want to improve everything about it that can help the user. So ideas and contribution about that is really welcome.
Obviously, it takes more communicative effort to work with a team than it does to take care of your own resource, but that is part of free software! Collaboration is key to free software, and it applies to free documentation too.
I keep coming back to wikipedia… that’s the ultimate example of people working together with good people resources and making an incredible result. We can get there too, but we need more contribution from people like yourself!
Best wishes
Thanks for your response, Matthew. I do believe the Wiki has improved. I like particular pages (and often like to them). And I have contributed a few pages as well (PDFEdit, SeaMonkey, Songbird, among others).
Nevertheless, I stand by my points. I believe that smaller sites that do not attempt to be comprehensive have their place as well.
I do not think community/”universal” documentation sites are in direct competition with smaller, more focused documentation sites.
Hi again,
Thanks for the response. I appreciate that there is a place for smaller sites and I agree that they aren’t in “competition” with official resources. My point was rather that we could all be more effective by working together, in circumstances where we have the same goal (and from reading your original post, I’m convinced we do).
Of course you are entitled to your opinion, and everyone is entitled to create new documentation websites, just as everyone is entitled to create a fork or new version of Ubuntu. But generally, experience has taught us that unless the fork has different goals or a new purpose, it’s just better for all of us to contribute directly to a single resource.
Anyway, I obviously accept your position, and wish you well. If you would like to include a link to the official documentation under “What other Ubuntu resources are there?” on your site, that would be great.
Please take the time to have a read of the wiki page I linked above (although you may have done so already): even if you disagree about the best way to work, there are other ways which you might be able to help (for example by making your work available under a compatible license).
You may want to read my entry on unified Linux. I don’t really believe in wasting energy on coordinating efforts into one project. Too many chefs in one kitchen, and all that.
I do, however, agree with the principle of “standing on the shoulders of giants,” which is why I have ported a few of my Psychocats tutorials directly to the Wiki. And I haven’t officially registered Psychocats with Creative Commons, but I have said informally on numerous occasions to those who’ve asked that the closest license to what I feel the Psychocats documentation would be released as would be the Attribution-NonCommercial one.
People are free to use the Psychocats tutorials as a base for Wiki pages. They are also free to translate it to other languages (and people have done so, with my permission).
Thanks: I’ve now read that post. I tend to agree, and the key point you make which is relevant to this discussion is “people have different interests and needs”. Where that is true, forks can be appropriate and will happen naturally with software.
Unfortunately, forks in documentation initiatives happen even where the initiatives are seeking to address the same interests and needs; because it’s too easy to avoid collaborating on documentation. That’s when forking becomes unproductive.
Thanks for the indication about licensing: however, it’s not possible to copy any of your material to the help wiki unless you explicitly confirm that the documentation can be used under the license used by the help wiki. You’d need to do that by displaying some license text for a compatible license on the pages where your material is displayed. The help wiki uses a cc-by-sa license (which does *not* contain a non-commercial clause, as that would be against the principles of free software).